I find Google statistics a little bit like the Zimbabwean currency. It doesn’t take long before I am confused by the zeros.
In short, I need a Big Mac Index to give me a sense of what is a lot, or a little, of internet traffic.
My Big Mac of Internet traffic in UK in July 2009
You see here that about 3.5K optimistic users searched for “barbecue” in July 2009 – about 0.01% of UK’s 40M internet users.
About 7K searched for “summer” and “psychology” respectively – each accounting for about 0.02% of internet users (2 in 10 000).
Cricket against Australia this summer (the Ashes) has been exciting and 40K, or 1 out of 1000 of us turned to the internet for information. That is 0.1% of UK internet users.
But compare that to 400K searches for the “weather” (1 in 100 of us or 1%). And to 112K of us who searched for “jobs”. That is 1 in 360 of us or 0.3% of UK internet users.
About half of the “Unique Visitors” searching for “jobs” accessed the government website, BTW.
Google AdPlanner vs Google Keywords Tool
I found all the figures on Google AdPlanner by setting Geographical Location to UK and putting in the Keywords into Keywords Searched.
What is the difference between Google AdPlanner and Google Keyword Tools?
The number of people searching for “jobs” with Google Adwords – with “narrow match” and location as UK – was just under 3 000 000 searches in June. The slight mismatch of dates doesn’t really matter for our current purposes. That averages about 30 searches a month for each UV (unique visitor as calculated by Google AdPlanner), or 1 search for each day of the month.
The “broad match” for “jobs” was much higher at 124M. To keep it to round figures, that is about 1000 searches for each UV, unique visitor, or about 3 a day, or 5 searches per person per business day.
So that is my Big Mac for Keywords!
1. Choose five marker words to put into Google AdPlanner with geographical location set at UK.
2. Calculate Unique Views or users for each Keyword by picking a website (any one) and dividing the UV by the % reach and multiplying by 100.
3. Then double check against Google Adwords, using UK and both “broad match” and “narrow match”, to get a sense of the intensity of search by each unique user.